ballads and godly books. He would not serve for the breastplate of a begging Grecian. The most cramped compendium that the age hath seen since all learning hath been almost torn into ends, outstrips him by the head. I have heard of puppets that could prattle in a play, but never saw of their writings before. There goes a report of the Holland women that together with their children they are delivered of a Sooterkin, not unlike to a rat, which some imagine to be the offspring of the stoves. I know not what Ignis fatuus adulterates the press, but it seems much after that fashion, else how could this vermin think to be a twin to a legitimate writer; when those weekly fragments shall pass for history, let the poor man's box be entitled the exchequer, and the alms-basket a magazine. Not a worm that gnaws on the dull scalp of voluminous Holinshed, but at every meal devoured more chronicle than his tribe amounts to. A marginal note of W. P. would serve for a winding-sheet for that man's works, like thick-skinned fruits are all rind, fit for nothing but the author's fate, to be pared in a pillory.

The cook who served up the dwarf in a pie (to continue the frolic) might have lapped up such an historian as this in the bill of fare. He is the first tincture and rudiment of a writer, dipped as yet in the preparative blue, like an almanac well-willer. He is the cadet of a pamphleteer, the pedee of a romancer; he is the embryo of a history slinked before maturity. How should he record the issues of time who is himself an abortive? I will not say but that he may pass for an historian in Garbier's academy; he is much of the size of those knotgrass professors. What a pitiful seminary was there projected; yet suitable enough to the present universities, those dry nurses which the providence of the age has so fully reformed that they are turned reformadoes. But that's no matter, the meaner the better. It is a maxim observable in these days, that the only way to win the game is to play petty Johns. Of this number is the esquire of the quill, for he hath the grudging of history and some yawnings accordingly. Writing is a disease in him and holds like a quotidian, so 'tis his infirmity that makes him an author, as Mahomet was beholding to the

falling sickness to vouch him a prophet. That nice artificer who filed a chain so thin and light that a flea could trail it (as if he had worked shorthand, and taught his tools to cypher), did but contrive an emblem for this skipjack and his slight productions.

Methinks the Turk should licence diurnals because he prohibits learning and books. A library of diurnals is a wardrobe of frippery; 'tis a just idea of a Limbo of the infants. I saw one once that could write with his toes, by the same token I could have wished he had worn his copies for socks; 'tis he without doubt from whom the diurnals derive their pedigree, and they have a birthright accordingly, being shuffled out at the bed's feet of history. To what infinite numbers an historian would multiply should he crumble into elves of this profession? To supply this smallness they are fain to join forces, so they are not singly but as the custom is in a croaking committee. They tug at the pen like slaves at the oar, a whole bank together; they write in the posture that the Swedes gave fire in, over one another's heads. It is said there is more of them go to a suit of clothes than to a Britannicus; in this polygamy the clothes breed and cannot determine whose issue is lawfully begotten.

And here I think it were not amiss to take a particular how he is accoutred, and so do by him as he in his Siquis for the walleyed mare, or the crop flea-bitten, give you the marks of the beast. I begin with his head, which is ever in clouts, as if the nightcap should make affidavit that the brain was pregnant. To what purpose doth the Pia Mater lie in so dully in her white formalities; sure she hath had hard labour, for the brows have squeezed for it, as you may perceive by his buttered bon-grace that film of a demicastor; 'tis so thin and unctuous that the sunbeams mistake it for a vapour, and are like to cap him; so it is right heliotrope, it creaks in the shine and flaps in the shade; whatever it be I wish it were able to call in his ears. There's no proportion between that head and appurtenances; those of all lungs are no more fit for that small noddle of the circumcision than brass bosses for a Geneva Bible. In what a puzzling neutrality is the poor soul that moves betwixt two such ponderous

biases? His collar is edged with a piece of peeping linen, by which he means a band; 'tis the forlorn of his shirt crawling out of his neck; indeed it were time that his shirt were jogging, for it has served an apprenticeship, and (as apprentices use) it hath learned its trade too, to which effect 'tis marching to the papermill, and the next week sets up for itself in the shape of a pamphlet. His gloves are the shavings of his hands, for he casts his skin like a cancelled parchment. The itch represents the broken seals. His boots are the legacies of two black jacks, and till he pawned the silver that the jacks were tipped with it was a pretty mode of boot-hose-tops. For the rest of his habit he is a perfect seaman, a kind of tarpaulin, he being hanged about with his coarse composition, those pole-davie papers.

But I must draw to an end, for every character is an anatomy lecture, and it fares with me in this of the diurnal-maker, as with him that reads on a begged malefactor, my subject smells before I have gone through with him; for a parting blow then. The word historian imports a sage and solemn author, one that curls his brow with a sullen gravity, like a bull-necked Presbyter since the army hath got him off his jurisdiction, who, Presbyter like, sweeps his breast with a reverend beard, full of native mosstroopers; not such a squirting scribe as this that's troubled with the rickets, and makes pennyworths of history. The collegetreasury that never had in bank above a Harry-groat, shut up there in a melancholy solitude, like one that is kept to keep possession, had as good evidence to show for his title as he for an historian; so, if he will needs be an historian, he is not cited in the sterling acceptation, but after the rate of bluecaps' reckoning, an historian Scot. Now a Scotchman's tongue runs high fullams. There is a cheat in his idiom, for the sense ebbs from the bold expression, like the citizen's gallon, which the drawer interprets but half a pint. In sum, a diurnal-maker is the antimark of an historian, he differs from him as a drill from a man, or (if you had rather have it in the saints' gibberish) as a hinter doth from a holder-forth.

THE CHARACTER OF A LONDON DIUrnal.

A diurnal is a puny chronicle, scarce pin-feathered with the wings of time. It is a history in sippets: the English Iliads in a nutshell: the apocryphal Parliament's book of Maccabees in single sheets. It would tire a Welshman to reckon up how many aps 'tis removed from an annal; for it is of that extract, only of the younger house, like a shrimp to a lobster. The original sinner in this kind was Dutch, Gallo-Belgicus the protoplast, and the modern Mercuries but Hans-en-kelders. The Countess of

Zealand was brought to bed of an almanac, as many children as days in the year. It may be the legislative lady is of that lineage, so she spawns the diurnals, and they at Westminster take them in adoption by the names of Scoticus, Civicus, Britannicus. In the frontispiece of the old Beldam diurnal, like the contents of the chapter, sitteth the House of Commons judging the twelve tribes of Israel. You may call them the kingdom's anatomy before the weekly calendar; for such is a diurnal, the day of the month with what weather in the commonwealth. It is taken for the pulse of the body politic, and the empiric-divines of the assembly, those spiritual dragooners, thumb it accordingly. Indeed it is a pretty synopsis, and those grave rabbis (though in the point of Divinity) trade in no larger authors. The countrycarrier, when he buys it for the vicar, miscalls it the urinal; yet properly enough, for it casts the water of the state ever since it staled blood. It differs from an Aulicus, as the devil and his exorcist, or as a black witch doth from a white one, whose office is to unravel her enchantments.

It begins usually with an Ordinance, which is a law still born, dropped before quickened by the royal assent. 'Tis one of the parliament's bye-blows, acts only being legitimate, and hath no more sire than a Spanish jennet that is begotten by the wind.

Thus their militia, like its patron Mars, is the issue only of the mother, without the concourse of royal Jupiter: yet law it is, if they vote it, in defiance to their fundamentals; like the old sexton, who swore his clock went true, whatever the sun said to the contrary.

T

The next ingredient of a diurnal is plots, horrible plots, which with wonderful sagacity it hunts dry-foot, while they are yet in their causes, before materia prima can put on her smock. How many such fits of the mother have troubled the kingdom; and for all Sir W. E. [William Earle] looks like a man-midwife, not yet delivered of so much as a cushion? But actors must have properties; and since the stages were voted down the only playhouse is at Westminster.

Suitable to their plots are their informers, skippers, and tailors, spaniels both for the land and water. Good conscionable intelligence! For however Pym's bill may inflame the reckoning, the honest vermin have not so much for lying as the public faith.

Thus a zealous botcher in Moorfields, while he was contriving some quirpocut of Church-Government, by the help of his outlying ears and the Otacousticon of the spirit, discovered such a plot, that Selden intends to combat antiquity, and maintain it was a tailor's goose that preserved the capital.

I wonder my Lord of Canterbury is not once more all to be traitored, for dealing with the lions to settle the Commission of Array in the Tower. It would do well to cramp the articles dormant, besides the opportunity of reforming these beasts of the prerogative, and changing their profaner names of Harry and Charles into Nehemiah and Eleazar.

Suppose a corn-cutter being to give little Isaac a cast of his office should fall to paring his brows (mistaking the one end for the other, because he branches at both), this would be a plot, and the next diurnal would furnish you with this scale of votes :

Resolved upon the question, That this act of the corn-cutter was an absolute invasion of the city's charter in the representative forehead of Isaac.

Resolved, That the evil counsellors about the corn-cutter are popishly affected and enemies to the State.

Resolved, That there be a public thanksgiving for the great deliverance of Isaac's brow-antlers; and a solemn covenant drawn up to defy the corn-cutter and all his works.

Thus the Quixotes of this age fight with the windmills of their